NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Sara Mearns was missing her cues.<\/p>\n
She couldn\u2019t hear what her dance partner was saying from across the studio. She was late for her entrances because the music sounded too soft.<\/p>\n
Without telling anyone, she finally made an appointment to get her hearing checked<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mearns learned that she had hearing loss<\/a>. After years of isolation, she got the tools<\/a> to make sense of a world that had gotten muffled.<\/p>\n Now, she\u2019s one of the first dancers with the New York City Ballet to wear hearing aids during performances.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like it\u2019s a whole new chapter of my life,\u201d Mearns, 40, said in an interview with the AP.<\/p>\n While hearing loss is common in older adults, it can happen at any age and can be caused by things like nerve damage, infection or head trauma. For Mearns, it may have been a blend of factors including genetics, medical conditions and exposure to loud noise.<\/p>\n Signs and symptoms of hearing loss<\/p>\n According to the National Institutes of Health, less than a fifth of American adults aged 20 to 69 who could benefit from wearing hearing aids have ever used them. That\u2019s due to lack of access, shame or embarrassment and just not knowing the symptoms.<\/p>\n \u201cHearing loss is often not detected by the person because what they can\u2019t hear, they don\u2019t know,\u201d said Dr. Anil Lalwani, a hearing expert with Columbia University Irving Medical Center.<\/p>\n Still, \u201cthere are a lot of symptoms of hearing loss that are not hearing less,\u201d said Dr. Maura Cosetti with Mount Sinai\u2019s New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. <\/p>\n One thing to look out for is saying \u201cwhat\u201d more often, and not being able to hear friends and family in noisy settings like restaurants. Other symptoms include ringing, a sensation like something is stuck in the ears or conversations sounding muffled.<\/p>\n This article is part of AP\u2019s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.<\/a><\/p>\n During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mearns couldn\u2019t hear conversations when people were wearing masks. <\/p>\n \u201cI realized that I was reading everybody\u2019s lips to understand what they were saying,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n If experiencing hearing loss, you have options<\/p>\n Experts say to let a doctor know if you think you may be experiencing symptoms of hearing loss. They can help you connect with an audiologist or an ear, nose and throat specialist to get a hearing test.<\/p>\n Cosetti with Mount Sinai said the Mimi Hearing Test app<\/a> can be useful resource to get a sense of your hearing. Seeing a professional is the best way to figure out what\u2019s actually going on \u2014 like whether your ears are just plugged up with wax or fluid.<\/p>\n Hearing aids fine-tune the sound signal that enters the brain, enhancing speech while lowering background noise. They can be expensive, but many are now available over the counter<\/a>. Some Apple AirPods<\/a> also can be used as hearing aids.<\/p>\n For more severe forms of hearing loss, doctors may recommend a device called a cochlear implant, which converts sounds into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. These include a surgically inserted component and can take months to get used to.<\/p>\n Hearing aids are an adjustment, but can be worth it<\/p>\n Mearns initially felt embarrassed to step into the booth for her hearing test, knowing she wouldn\u2019t be able to hear all the words. Her audiologist, Marta Gielarowiec, helped her understand what she was missing and guided her to appropriate hearing aids.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely not a one size fits all. There is a lot of adjustment, tuning and calibration involved,\u201d said Gielarowiec, who runs a practice in New York. \u201cOverall, the goal is to maximize the hearing that\u2019s left.\u201d<\/p>\n Addressing hearing loss can help boost mental health, improve communication<\/a> and slow cognitive decline<\/a> for people at high risk of dementia.<\/p>\n When Mearns walked out of her audiologist\u2019s office wearing her aids for the first time, she felt overwhelmed. She could hear the pattering of shoes on the ground, the chirping of birds across the street and the billowing of a flag a block behind her. Returning to her dressing room, she cried.<\/p>\n She can now hear the full might of the orchestra when she performs \u2014 and take phone calls in her ears.<\/p>\n The life she was living before, she said, was exhausting. At the end of every day she was spent from the strain of asking people to repeat themselves and missing out on conversations and the punch lines of jokes.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want people to feel what I felt, where I was embarrassed and I was quiet about it,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause now that I\u2019m on the other side, I\u2019m so happy.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Sara Mearns was missing her cues. She couldn\u2019t hear what her dance partner was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[77736,417,2953,77735,232,77471,77472,9,24,56,63,65,64,77473,421],"class_list":{"0":"post-194532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-be-well","9":"tag-general-news","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-hearing-loss-and-deafness","12":"tag-lifestyle","13":"tag-marta-gielarowiec","14":"tag-maura-cosetti","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nyc-headlines","20":"tag-nyc-news","21":"tag-sara-mearns","22":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}